To identify the main characters and the setting in a visual narrative

Key Stage 2

English

The BFG - Narrative Writing

﻿Hello everyone. I'm Miss Saab, I'm one of the Oak Academy teachers. We're going to be learning English together. So welcome to our very first English lesson. I'm so happy that I get to teach you this unit, because it's one of my favourite units to teach. And so, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do and let's get started. So our learning objective is to identify the main characters and the setting in a visual narrative. Visual means something that you can watch and narrative means a story. So we're going to identify the main characters and the setting in a movie today. The plan for today is to first introduce the narrative. That means I'm going to introduce the story that our unit is going to be based on. Then we are going to identify the main characters in the story. The main characters are the most important characters in the story. And finally, we are going to identify the setting in the story. That means where, and when the story is taking place. In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pen and your brain to be switched on. So let's click to switch our brains on, let's do it together, 3, 2, 1. Good job. So another thing that you will need is a ruler, if you've got one. So I would like you to pause the video now to grab your paper, pencil and ruler if you do not have them. Great. So hopefully, you now have everything you need to start your learning. The last thing we need to check is that we are in a quiet and comfortable space away from as many distractions as possible so that we can focus and do our very best learning. So I'm going to introduce the narrative. I'm going to introduce the story that our unit is going to be based on. Our new writing unit is based on a book written by a very famous author. It's Roald Dahl. Now you might've heard of him before. Keywords and facts about him. So he was born in Wales in 1916. He was a spy, a fighter pilot in World War Two and an author. So he had many different jobs throughout his lifetime. And an author is another word for a writer, okay? They mean the same thing. Do you know any books written by Roald Dahl? Have a think. And then I want you to tell your screen, which books do you know? Okay, let's see if I picked out the same ones that you mentioned. So Roald Dahl has written many children's books. He wrote "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "The Twits", "Matilda", "Fantastic Mr. Fox", "The BFG" and "James and the Giant Peach". And Roald Dahl's books are so popular that lots of them have been turned into plays and into movies. Now our literacy unit is based on one of these books that were written by Roald Dahl. Have a guess, which one do you think it is? I'm going to reveal it now. Drum roll. Our new unit is based on "The BFG". Now the BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant. That's what it stands for. In this unit, we will use clips from the film, "The BFG" to support our narrative writing. So we're not going to be looking at the book, we're going to be looking at the movie to help us with our writing. So now we're going to identify the main characters in "The BFG". Now we know that one of the main characters is the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant, because the book is named after him. So he must be a very important character. But there's another really important character in "The BFG". So now we're going to watch the opening scene of "The BFG" movie. And I would like you to see if you can find out who the other main character is and what their name is.

No.

Who is that out of bed?

Sophie miss.

Did you find out who the other main character is? In a full sentence is, tell your screen. "The other main character is..." Sophie, good job. Now in the book we find out that Sophie has sadly lost both of her parents. Now a child who has lost both of their parents is called an orphan. Okay, so my turn, orphan. Your turn, orphan. Good job. Right, let's recap who the two main characters in "The BFG" are. So I would like you to point to the two correct options on your screen. Are the two main characters, the Big Friendly Giant, Sophia, Big Frightening Giant or Sophie? So point to them. Okay, the two main characters are the Big Friendly Giant and Sophie, well done. So now we're going to look at the setting of the story. That means where the story is happening and when it is happening. So to help us find out where Sophie lives, where the story is set, we're going to watch the opening scene again. And I want you to make sure that you're really, really focusing. There is a sign that tells you where Sophie lives. Okay, so see if you can spot that in the video. Okay, so in a full sentence, tell your screen, "The story is set in..." Good job. This story is set in the Clonkers Home For Girls. Now this is a home for orphan girls that have sadly lost their parents. And we can call a home for orphans an orphanage as well. So my turn, orphanage. Your turn, orphanage. Good job. Now in the opening scene, we saw that Sophie is in a large room with lots of other beds because she shares the room with other girls. So we call a room, we call a large room with many beds a dormitory. My turn, dormitory. Dormitory. Good job. Right, now we're going to move on to when the story is happening. So in the book we find out that the opening, the beginning of the story is during the witching hour. Now, what do you think happens at that hour of the day and why? The witching hour, hmm. So tell your screen, "I think..." Going to give you a clue, there is a smaller word inside a bigger word. So there's the word witch inside witching, so that might give you a clue. So what do you think happens during that hour? "I think..." Interesting, let's find out together. So the witching hour is the time later at night when witches, ghosts and other scary creatures are said to appear. Now don't be afraid, because this is all fictional. It's all made up. This doesn't actually happen at night, okay? So let's recap where, and when this story takes place, okay? So I would like you to point to the correct answer, where is the story set, in a family home or in a dormitory? Point to the screen. It's set in a dormitory. You are right. Now, Sophie lives in a home, but she lives in a home for orphans, not in her family home, because sadly she has lost her family, she's lost her mom and dad. When is the witching hour? Is it in the daytime or in the nighttime? Point to the correct answer? It's in the nighttime, you were right, next question. Which creature is the odd one out and why? Is it the witch, the tooth fairy, the goblin or the ghost. So I want you to tell me in a full sentence, "I think the odd one out is..." And then remember to say why, "Because..." Good explanation. Right, the odd one out is the tooth fairy, because all the other creatures come out during the witching hour, the witch, the goblin and the ghost, those are scary creatures that definitely come out during the witching hour whereas the tooth fairy is not so scary and does not come out during the witching hour. Okay, so what do you think Sophie will see during the witching hour? So in the opening scene where we left off, Sophie got out of bed and she was going to the window to look out at the window. Now, what do you think she will see outside during the witching hour, when it's late at night? What creatures do you think might be lurking outside? What do you think will appear? So tell me, tell your screen. "I think Sophie will see..." Oh, good predictions. Right, we're going to watch the rest of the opening now and see what actually is a lurking outside during the witching hour.

You get back at once! Punishment in the morning!

Yes, miss.

Oh my goodness. Did you see that tall, mysterious figure out in the streets during the witching hour? Hmm, I wonder who that might be? So now, I would like you to sketch and label this setting, using some ambitious adjectives. Now a sketch is a quick craft drawing. It doesn't have to be perfect. Here was my example, and I tried to include as many things as I could remember from the setting. So I put the beds in the dormitory, I put the curtains, the window. I put houses in the street that we saw outside. And you might've noticed other things. So add as much detail as you can, okay? And an adjective is a describing word. So for example, I can say, "Brown hair." Brown is an adjective, because it's describing the colour of my hair. It's giving me extra information about my hair. So for example, I put two adjectives. I challenged myself to put two adjectives to make an expanded-noun phrase, to describe the curtains. And so, I put tattered, dusty curtains, and I remembered my comma in between the two adjectives for my expanded-noun phrase. So tattered means old and ragged. And I thought dusty would be a good adjective to describe the curtains as well, because Sophie lives in quite an old building. The dormitory doesn't look very clean as well. There were some cobwebs in the corner, so I thought the curtains might be dusty. And then, I put another word to describe the houses outside. I put crooked, so they were a bit twisted and bent out of shape. So here are some ideas of things that you could describe in this setting. You could describe the houses like me. You could describe the curtains. You could describe the moonbeam, the bed, the sky, and feel free to include any of your ideas as well. For houses, you could use my adjective, crooked and then add another adjective to challenge yourself, to create an ENP an expanded-noun phrase with two adjectives, separated by a comma to describe the houses, okay? Make sure to use adjectives that are accurately describing what something in the setting looks like or feels like. And so, really think about your adjective choices. So I would like you to press Pause now so that you can have a go at doing your sketch and adding your ambitious adjectives. And when you're ready, press Play so that we can go through it together. Well done for finishing your sketch off and including all those ambitious adjectives. Here are some adjectives that I thought of. You might've thought of similar ones or different ones. That's okay. You can steal some of these adjectives if you want and include them in your sketch as well. And we can reuse those adjectives in our writing later on in our "BFG" unit, okay? So note down any of your favourite ones so that you can use them later on in the unit as well. So for the houses, I said crooked, menacing houses. So crooked, means they're bent and twisted out of shape. And I put menacing, because they look a little bit threatening. They look like they're about to harm us, because they're leaning over and they're quite pointy. So it looks like they could really cause us some harm or some damage. So look a bit menacing, a bit threatening. I put slanting, silvery, moonbeam, because it's not a straight moonbeam. It's kind of slanting in a diagonal and it was quite, it was silvery in colour. I put creaky, uncomfortable bed. I can imagine those beds are not very comfortable for poor Sophie. And I put pitch-black, thundery sky, because I remember the thunder at the very beginning of the opening. Well done team. We have just finished our very first lesson together. So today we introduced the narrative that our unit will be based on. Which story is our unit based on? It's based on the... Tell me, yes, it's based on "The BFG". Good job. Then we looked at the main characters in our story. Who were the two main characters? Say them. Yes, it's the BFG and Sophie, well done. And we looked at the setting. So where is the story taking place? And when is it taking place? Where is it taking place? Where does Sophie live? Tell me. Yes, she lives in a dormitory or we said we could call it an orphanage, or they called it The Clonkers Home For Girls in the clip. And we found out when the story was taking place. It was taking place later at night where some scary creatures come out, we call that the witching hour. Good job. So, all done. Fantastic work, well done for all of your hard work, you should be so proud of yourselves. Next lesson, we are going to look at the opening scene of "The BFG" in even more detail, okay? So I'll see you very soon. Keep up your hard work.

To identify the main characters and the setting in a visual narrative

To identify the main characters and the setting in a visual narrative

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UnitEnglish / The BFG - Narrative Writing

English